Today I was working on a few sections of an upcoming Sort Your Story companion guide and one section was on newspaper articles.

Have you noticed how much information may be contained both in plain sight and “hidden” in newspaper articles? The article I was working with was about a couple of Army soldiers from 1952 who scored a perfect on a mental aptitude test. Reading that article without looking deeply for details you probably notice the nice picture of the men above the article. You may note their names and possibly the unit in which they served. But there are a few other details you might overlook such as their addresses being listed which allows you to put them in a specific place in 1952. It also lists their occupations, yet another way to identify them or search for additional information on these men.

Examine every piece of a newspaper article and make sure you source that article and if possible, photocopy or download a copy of it to your computer. Enter that information in Sort Your Story and note any special details that might lead to new research. Those often overlooked details may help you open up an entirely new research path.